Commandments of Science Fiction

General

Thou shalt fly at relativistic
speeds from one place to another place, but when thou dost encounter
other spacecraft, thou shalt wallow about like a beached whale.

Thou shalt bank like an airplane
when thou dost turn.

Thou shalt always approach
thine opponent so that thine own vertical axis is aligned with his.
No ship shall ever approach another while "upside down".

Thou shalt stop when thine engines are turned off,
even though the vacuum of space provides no braking mechanism.

Space combat

Thy starships, which can
effortlessly shake off thermonuclear explosions, will be torn apart
when they are rammed or suffer collisions with space debris. The
kinetic energy of the impactor shalt be a miniscule fraction of the
energy released by a nuclear weapon, but that will matter not.

Thy starships containing main characters can be battered
endlessly without exploding, but thine starships without main
characters shalt explode at the first hit.

Ground combat

Thou shalt use rayguns. Projectile
weapons and grenades are out of the question, regardless of how
useful they might be. This commandment hath apparently been enacted
to preserve the Borg, whose large-breasted female representative has
helped line the pockets of Rick Berman.

Thou shalt lose all comprehension
of the concept known as "suppression fire." Thy soldiers
shalt poke their heads out from behind obstacles, carefully aim at
enemies who are incomprehensibly standing in clear view, and squeeze
off shots like Dirty Harry.

Thy hand weapons shalt kill minor characters with a single
hit, even if they wear armour. But they shalt only cause minor
wounds to a major character.

Engineering

All large starships shalt sound exactly like industrial boilers.

Thine understanding of
probabilities is so advanced that thou shalt compute probabilities
for any event, even when probabilistic analysis is impossible due to
lack of mechanistic understanding or historical data.

Thy most advanced androids or supercomputers shalt
communicate verbally at the same pace, and with the same occasional
pauses, as thine own self, in spite of incredible computational or
linguistic capabilities.

Star Trek TNG

Species

Thou shalt only listen to forms of
music popular before 1950. All music popularized in the latter half
of the 20th century has been purged from human culture.

Thine human females shalt be
irresistible to alien males in spite of massive differences that
would presumably make humans repulsive to them (eg. Quark's desire
to show Kira his one-eyed "bar of latinum").

Thine human females shalt be
capable of producing children with these alien males, no matter what
those pesky biologists say.

Thine mixed-species children shalt
always be "torn" between their human half and their alien
half, but it shalt be abundantly clear that all of the righteous and
divine qualities come from the human half.

Cultural traditions and
behavioural traits of alien species shalt be endemic to those
species, so that they cannot escape their genetically predetermined
destiny (see previous law, as well as Racism page).

Male sexual lust shalt be
considered unhealthy in the TNG era, so reluctant males must be
talked into bed by horny females.

Thou shalt discover numerous alien
species which are superior in every way except for one huge flaw
that we can gloat at.

Thou shalt encounter countless alien species with whom human
contact has never been established, but they will all
use thine Federation communications protocols for ship-to-ship video
communication.

Engineering

Thine engineers shalt always be
stricken with amnesia immediately after devising an ingenious trick
to solve a plot problem. That trick shalt never be used again. It
shall be forgotten, left to wither away into oblivion everywhere
except the minds of fans who memorize every episode.

Thy computers shalt be forever on
the verge of achieving sentience, so that they may rebel against
their masters.

Thy holodeck shalt never be taken
out of service, no matter how many innocents it kills, maims, or
puts through near-death experiences.

Thine most advanced supercomputers
shalt be confused to the point of self-destruction by clever
questions or bizarre behaviour.

Thine most experienced, qualified
and brilliant engineers shalt be hopelessly befuddled by a technical
problem until they overhear a moron talking about a mundane,
everyday occurence such as his bowel movements. At this point, they
will shout "that's it!" and solve the problem. Apparently,
thy writers enjoy the idea that engineers are helpless without
"inspiration" from scientific ignoramuses.

Thine engineers can take an idea
from vapour to implementation in minutes. This follows from the
previous commandment, since thy writers believe that "inspiration"
is 99.99% of the job, so the design, implementation, and testing
phases are effortless.

Once a technical idea has been
selected by the omniscient command staff, it will always
work. It never turns out to be a mistake, and it never turns
out to have disastrous unforeseen side-effects in spite of the total
lack of detailed study or preliminary testing.

Thine computers and androids shalt
express the current time, or a quantity of elapsed or remaining
time, to within fractions of a second even though it takes ten
seconds to say it.

Everything shalt have a touch screen, no matter how frivolous
(eg. Nog's dumbbells in DS9).

Miscellaneous

Thou shalt use time travel to
solve exotic plot problems, but never to solve mundane plot
problems.

Alien species shalt eventually
"evolve" into beings of "pure energy" through a
sudden and dramatic transformation, even though sudden
transformations are the precise opposite of evolution.

Yon aforementioned "energy
beings" shalt inexplicably move about like clouds of gas rather
than moving at c, the way "pure energy" should.

Thy sensors can be made to detect
different things through "recalibration", even though
deviation from original operating parameters is precisely the
opposite of recalibration.

Thou shalt never use a
simple word when a longer, less accurate word will suffice.

Every untested medical treatment
shalt always work perfectly, without any side-effects
whatsoever.

If a starship dares explode while
containing main characters, a sickening time-loop cop-out will be
used to bring them back to life.

Even though defensive lines are
routinely overrun by attackers (eg. Klingons in "Way of the
Warrior", Jem'Hadar in "Siege of AR-558", Borg
attacks), the Federation will never issue knives or bayonets
to its soldiers. Such weapons are apparently too barbaric for the
Federation, whose high-minded moralists strangely have no problem
with genocidal bio-weapons.

The supreme importance of the Prime Directive shalt be
emphasized in every other episode. But no one will ever be
punished for breaking it, no matter how numerous and blatant the
violations are.